No abstract

The double-aperture method has been used to determine the nonlinearity correction for a new spectrophotometer having a precision of +/-4 x 10(-5) transmittance units. The random and systematic errors of the method are discussed, and techniques are described that yield the additive nonlinearity correction to the high level of precision required for this spectrophotometer. The correction was found to be independent of source polarization, free from interference errors, but slightly dependent on wavelength.

A direct spectroradiometric determination of the temperature of freezing gold was performed by measuring the spectral radiances of a gold blackbody relative to those of a laser-irradiated integrating sphere which was calibrated with absolute silicon detectors and an electrically calibrated radiometer. The measurements were performed at three laser wavelengths near 600 nm, and the temperature of the blackbody was calculated by substituting the measured spectral radiances into Planck’s radiation formula. The result obtained, TAu=(1337.33± 0.34) K, is 0.25 K below the gold-point assignment in the International Practical Temperature Scale of 1968 (IPTS-68) and has been adopted in September 1990 as the new gold-point value in the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90). The effect of this change in the gold-point assignment on pyrometric, radiometric, and photometric measurement services provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology is assessed.

Standard Reference Material s (SRM s ) 2941 is a cuvette-shaped, uranyl-ion-doped glass, recommended for use for relative spectral correction of emission and day-to-day performance validation of fluorescence spectrometers. Properties of this standard that influence its effective use or contribute to the uncertainty in its certified emission spectrum have been explored here. These properties include its photostability, absorbance, dissolution rate in water, anisotropy, temperature coefficient of fluorescence intensity, and fluorescence lifetimes. The expanded uncertainties in the certified spectrum are about 4% around the peak maximum at 526 nm, using an excitation wavelength of 427 nm. The SRM also exhibits a strong resistance to photodegradation, with no measurable decrease in fluorescence intensity even after 8 h of laser irradiation. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This paper summarizes the theory of Fresnel diffraction by plane rectangular and circular apertures with a view toward numerical computations. Approximations found in the earlier literature, and now obsolete, have been eliminated and replaced by algorithms suitable for use on a personal computer.